15 Facts About Ibn al-Shatir

Ibn al-Shatir was born in Damascus, Mamluk Sultanate around the year 1304.

Ibn al-Shatir's father died when he was six years old.

Ibn al-Shatir's grandfather took him in which resulted in Ibn al-Shatir learning the craft of inlaying ivory.

Ibn al-Shatir traveled to Cairo and Alexandria to study astronomy, where he fell in, inspired him.

Ibn al-Shatir made several astronomical observations and calculations both for the purposes of the mosque, and to fuel his later research.

Ibn al-Shatir's first set of tables, which have been lost over time, allegedly combined his observations with those of Ptolemy, and contained entries on the Sun, Moon and Earth.

Ibn al-Shatir's model incorporated the Urdi lemma, and eliminated the need for an equant by introducing an extra epicycle, departing from the Ptolemaic system in a way that was mathematically identical to what Nicolaus Copernicus did in the 16th century.

Ibn al-Shatir's model aimed to do just that, creating a new eccentricity for the solar model.

Ibn al-Shatir never gave motivation towards his two epicycles to be adopted, so it was hard to tell the difference between his model and the Ptolemaic model.

Copernicus followed a heliocentric model while Ibn al-Shatir followed the geocentric model.

Also Copernicus followed the inductive reasoning while Ibn al-Shatir followed the Zij traditions.

Ibn al-Shatir invented it for the purpose of finding the times of prayers.

The sundial being engraved on the marble was so that Ibn al-Shatir could read the time of the day in equinoctial hours for the prayer times.

Ibn al-Shatir created another sundial but in smaller dimensions to find out the prayer times of midday and the afternoon.

Ibn al-Shatir created a set of tables that had values of spherical astronomical functions for prayer times.